Ok, so you should know by now that I bought a camera, a Nikon D40 (Digital SLR). It cost me a mere $600 for the "kit" consisting of a house and an 18-55mm lens. The equivalent kit I haven't seen for less than $800 on mail order and closer to $1.000 in the stores.

Now, this struck me as a pretty sweet deal, and I think it may still be, but here are a few words of warning, if you're considering going in this direction. The D40 is a scaled down version of the D50, ie. they removed auto focus from the house leaving it up to the lens to do the focusing. Only lenses marked DX (for Digitial) and AF-S or AF-I give you what you expect. Currently the number of compatible lenses is maybe 15.

Also, the accompanying lens of 18-55mm very quickly becomes a serious limitation if you want to "get close", and as such you quickly feel the urge to go out looking for another lens. I'm there already. In particular I've been looking at two (well three, but the last one is way to expensive): a 55-200mm lens priced at roughly $550 and an 18-135mm lens priced at roughly $600. The former would complement my existing 18-55mm lens, the latter would act as a replacement all-round lens with an acceptable zoom.

The things I am considering now is this: Why didn't I just buy the D80 camera with the 18-135mm zoom (default) - it would have cost me a little more, but the D80 has AF (and thus you can use all of Nikon's lensens) - and you can use non-Nikon lenses as well (mind you, they come a lot cheaper!!) and these you're actually able to get your hands on. Appearently Nikon is way back logged when it comes to supplying lenses to Danish stores. I've been everywhere, and the 55-200mm lens is "on the way" and the 18-135mm lens is hugely expensive for some reason (closer to $700).

On top of everything, I've been looking at the same lenses in stores in the US. They're only $300 and $400 respectively, which would make the effective DKK/$ exchange rate a whopping 10 DKK/$ - official rate is something like 5.6 - I know VAT carries some of the blame, but this is just insane.

So should I maybe sell my brand new camera and buy the D80? Or should I just buy the 55-200mm lens and be forced to run around with two lenses? Or get the 18-135mm lens and be satisfied with "only" 7.5x zoom (as opposed to the 11x zoom the 200mm lens offers.. Argh!! And worse still: Am I becoming a photo nerd?!